Possible to lock part of the homescreen?

[Guest DJester]

Is there some kind of tag or anything I can put into my homescreen so if I have several plugins showing, and it goes past the bottom of the screen, the top few plugins won't scroll, but the bottom few will?

For example:

Carrier/Time/Date

MRU

SMS/VMail

have those stay on the screen in the same position, while the following plugins would scroll up and down (if neccesary) in just the bottom half of the screen?

Calendar

All Day event

Profile

etc....

This way I could design a homescreen with a background specifically to fit under the top plugins, and the bottom plugins would just fill a blank "text only" space near the bottom.

Possible? Ideas?

[Guest drblow]

Not really possible I'm afraid. I've tried things like that before, but the plugins never scroll correctly - the alignment goes all funny when you try to scroll back up through them.

[Guest simon211175]

perhaps you could make several 200px tall blocks, repeating the top 3 plugins for each extra plugin you want to scroll through, but on all but the first occurrence make them unselectable. In theory that would give the look of the top 3 plugins being static, and making them unselectable would mean the focus would remain on the plugin that "appeared" to be scrolled to?

Not sure if that makes sense, and it might only work in my head - if drBlow can't do it, then it probably can't be done.

[Guest drblow]

;) If only that were true!! But thanks anyway!

The idea is sound enough, & I think if the top plugins could be made unselectable then it might just work. The problem I always had when trying to do things like that was that while sometimes the plugins would scroll down correctly, they misalign when scrolling back up. But it would be a neat trick if somebody could get it working properly.

[Guest DJester]

perhaps you could make several 200px tall blocks, repeating the top 3 plugins for each extra plugin you want to scroll through, but on all but the first occurrence make them unselectable. In theory that would give the look of the top 3 plugins being static, and making them unselectable would mean the focus would remain on the plugin that "appeared" to be scrolled to?

Not sure if that makes sense, and it might only work in my head - if drBlow can't do it, then it probably can't be done.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What would be a general idea on how to do this? I'm really new to xml but quick to learn, so if I have a general idea to work from I'm sure I can figure it out....

[Guest drblow]

It's all about plugin heights. You can make a fullscreen plugin by setting height="200" which is how the multiscreen plugin-per-page xmls work. That would be the kind of effect you are describing, but as Simon211175 says using non-selectable plugins and another plugin below it. The screen height is 200 in total, & every time you exceed 200 pixels the screen will scroll down to the next plugin. So in theory, you could set say 3 plugins on top that were unselectable, taking up a total of 100 say pixels, below that you could have another plugin 100 height - if you repeat that entire section below that again (replacing the lower plugin) then in theory the screen would appear to stay 'locked' at the top, and only the bottom section would change. But I bet you it wouldn't scroll back up properly.

Oh, & if you want to learn about xml, I recommend you do a search on xml/homescreens in the forum, then download a few screens you like, and open the xml & graphics - look at them, change them & reload it on your phone. Honestly, trial & error is the best way. Using homescreen apps like ruttensoft will limit the things you can do compared to simply editing an xml file manually. Most of the things you can do with homescreen have already been discussed here in one form or another, so any answers you need should be in the forums somewhere if you search hard enough. & of course if you find unanswered questions, you can always ask them! We love new questions around here!! ;)